Congrats Claribelle and Van! You both look super cute & loved up on your big day. Truly MFEO (Made for Each Other – their company name!!!). Check out their vintage wedding details via the link above. And I LOVE that she’s rocking a green wedding dress. You all know I’m a lover of green and I think it’s all about blues, purples and greens this fashion season so good on Claribelle for bringing runway colours down the aisle! So inspired right now!

So as those of you following Invisible Bride know, I wanted to create a space for brides and grooms of colour (and anyone else that feels that they are rendered “invisible” by the wedding industry as it exists today) to share and discuss wedding plans and ideas, since existing wedding platforms tend to focus on “conventionally” Western, heteronormative traditions featuring white, heterosexual couples.

Understandably then I was very excited to find a video tutorial for applying Asian bridal make-up on Yahoo.com! While I’m not entirely sure that there is one single “Asian bridal look” considering the size of the continent that is home to a vast number and variety of cultures, faiths and traditions, it was nice to see some beauty advice being offered to brides of colour who may not be wearing a white dress on their big day and therefore need style tips that will go with alternative material shades*.

Still, the video could give the impression that ALL Asian weddings feature red dresses calling for similar styles of make-up which simply is not true.

Hard as I admittedly find it to overlook problematic, vague and generalising terms such as “Asian”, it is true that red and dark pink are the traditional and/or fashionable colours for brides to wear on their big day in several South Asian countries, where the colours are considered good luck symbols, such as China, Vietnam, India and Pakistan. It’s a shame then that when one does a Google images search for “red wedding dress” the majority of pictures are still of Western designs and featuring white models.

If you’re a bride of Asian heritage, let me know what you think of this development in the wedding industry? Do you find it useful and/or true to your culture? All the best as usual with your planning!

* Apparently, red wedding dresses are “in” this season (spring 2013) for “Western” weddings too, so the video and make-up shades/techniques could be increasingly useful for women of all backgrounds having all kinds of weddings depending on how popular red becomes!

I’ve already shared on Rants & Raves my new year’s eve experiences in Rotterdam a week ago. I happened to spend Christmas 2012 in London with my fiancé and got to catch up with some of our friends. While walking through the West End in a group, at some point we were approached by a Big Issue salesman. I was walking a few steps behind with a male friend, while my partner walked ahead. The salesman mistook my friend for my boyfriend and tried to use some friendly banter to convince him to buy a magazine for me. In the end I bought one, at which point the salesman began to tease my friend and exclaimed: “If she was my girlfriend, I wouldn’t make her pay for it herself!” I felt compelled at this stage to point out his mistake and gesture towards my fiancé, who was still a few steps ahead. Of course, the guy wasn’t expecting this, but I couldn’t help but sense something more in his gaze as he looked over to see my white fiancé. Some people might call me paranoid, but we had another experience at the airport on the way home.

While gift shopping together in duty free at Stansted, where we had entered the store together, walked around together, picked out tea together and then walked to the cashier together. Even though we were stood next to each other, talking at the cashier while Toon was being served, I was asked to walk around to the next cashier in order to be served, and eventually we were asked if we were together. As we left the shop, while we both agreed it was a weird experience, my fiancé tried to reassure me that it was probably just that we hadn’t been seen properly.

Indeed, we hadn’t been seen properly but my partner and I have different interpretations of what that means. While I think it means people don’t see us as a couple because they can’t wrap their heads around an interracial relationship, he thinks – in this case anyhow – that the store clerks just didn’t see us shopping together and thought I was waiting in line. Admittedly this is probably a healthier approach than mine, but I can’t stop myself worrying about how life will be for us after we are married. How many more times will people second guess are relationship to each other? And how far do we leave various experiences and situations before we speak out? We’ll keep you posted…

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Anecdotal analysis of the wedding industry while we plan our own interracial and international special day.